Article
An Interactivist-Hermeneutic
Metatheory for Positive Psychology
John Chambers Christopher
Robert L. Campbell
ABSTRACT. Drawing on
Bickhard’s interactivism along with philosophical hermeneutics, we outline a
plausible ontology of human action and development
that might serve as a metatheory for positive
psychology. Our nondualistic
metatheory rests on a distributed notion of
agency. The kinds of
morally imbued social practices that are
identified by hermeneutic theorists
constitute one level of agency. At the first
level of agency, persons are
already committed, at least by implication,
to folk psychologies that cover
positive emotion, positive traits, and
positive institutions. Higher levels of
agency and knowing emerge through the process
of development. The
higher knowing levels incorporate the
capacity for conscious self-reflexive
awareness, which permits the person to
consciously deliberate and form theories
of the good person and the good life. These
more consciously formed
positive folk psychologies are always in a
dialectical relationship with the
more implicit and embodied understandings of
the good life as manifested
in social practices, emotional experiences,
and habitual thoughts. We suggest
that this framework helps to account for the
‘diversity of goods’ that
underlie our lives and to clarify the
relationship that the professional positive
psychologist will have with his or her native
folk psychology.
KEYWORDS: critical psychology, cultural
psychology, flourishing, good life,
happiness, individualism, interactivism,
philosophy of social science, positive
psychology, well-being
Critics both within and outside of psychology
have persuasively argued for
a number of years that despite aspirations to
be an ahistorical, value- and culture-
free science, psychological theory, research,
and practice are all heavily
influenced by Western values and assumptions.
Today’s positive psychology
runs the same risk, as the papers in this
special issue attest. The uncritical
transmission of culturally specific and
contestable values and assumptions
THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY Copyright © 2008 SAGE
Publications. VOL. 18(5): 675–697
DOI: 10.1177/0959354308093401
http://tap.sagepub.com
will continue unless two issues are addressed
in the theoretical and philosophical
underpinnings of positive psychology.
The first issue is the inevitably value-laden
nature of psychology. Seligman
(2002) has encouraged positive psychologists
to suppose that they can step
around the messiness of trying to be
prescriptive:
… the theory is not a morality or a
world-view; it is a description. I strongly
believe that science is morally neutral (but
ethically relevant). The theory
put forward in this book describes what the
pleasant life, the good life, and
the meaningful life are. It describes how to
get these lives and what the consequences
of living them are. It does not prescribe
these lives for you, nor
does it, as a theory, value any of these
lives above the others.
It would be disingenuous to deny that I
personally value the meaningful life
above the good life, which in turn I value
above the pleasant life. But the
grounds for my valuing these lives are
external to the theory. I value contribution
to the whole above contribution just to the self,
and I value the
achieving of potential above living for the
moment. (p. 303)
These days a value-free conception of social
science is widely questioned,
both by philosophers of science (e.g.,
Laudan, 1984; Taylor, 1989) and by
theoretical and philosophical psychologists
(e.g., Christopher, 1999;
Guignon, 2002; Held, 2005; Sundararajan,
2005). And among all the scientific
enterprises that might aspire to
value-freedom, positive psychology
would seem to have some of the dimmest
prospects. Without judgments that
optimistic attitudes are good for human
beings and pessimistic attitudes are
bad, or that integrity is part of a good life
for us and lack of integrity is not,
how much positive psychology would there be
for Seligman (2002) to enunciate?
How could the subject matter of positive
psychology be defined in the
first place? As Woolfolk and Wasserman (2005)
have noted, declaring that
positive psychology makes no prescriptions
… is a little like an MBA program alleging
that it is neutral with respect to
the benefits of capitalism or that an
education that teaches one how to be
successful and earn a great deal of money, in
no sense advocates economic
achievement. (pp. 88–89).
The value-free assumption does not merely
contradict many of the conclusions
that positive psychologists wish to draw. It
impedes the future growth of positive
psychology, because it provides no incentive
for developing the conceptual
resources to recognize cultural values and
assumptions. Theoretical and philosophical
psychologists generally regard such
assumptions as embedded in psychological
theory and research, or as presupposed in
these activities. Positive psychologists,
on the other hand, too often take these kinds
of assumptions for granted.
The second issue to be addressed by positive
psychology is the attempted
separation of descriptive science from
prescriptive value commitments. That
separation, in turn, is symptomatic of a
tendency in Western culture to bifurcate
a wide range of phenomena: fact vs. value,
self vs. other, subjective vs.
676 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 18(5)
objective, mind vs. body, reason vs. emotion,
and so on. Such dualism, we
believe, stultifies the progress of
psychology in general, and, unless checked,
will hamper the promise of contemporary
positive psychology.
We think so, first of all, because these
dualistic presuppositions are in
error. A considerable amount of scholarship
challenges the ontological
veracity of dualism. Emerging non-dualistic
ontologies of the person, so we
would argue, are more successful in modeling
human agency and human
social realities.
Second, the dualistic presuppositions
themselves derive from a particular
cultural orientation to life. If we do not
recognize this, the underlying cultural
orientation will be uncritically perpetuated
in our theories, research, and practice,
and different cultural orientations will be
missed or misunderstood. Which,
in turn, will undermine the universal
aspirations of positive psychology.
In this paper we draw on the interactivism of
Mark Bickhard along with the
philosophical hermeneutics of Martin
Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and
Charles Taylor to outline a plausible
ontology of human action and development.
This nondualistic metatheory rests on a
distributed notion of agency. The kinds
of morally imbued social practices identified
by hermeneutic theorists constitute
one level of agency. At this first level of
agency, persons are already committed,
at least by implication, to folk psychologies
that cover the subject matter of positive
psychology: positive emotions, positive
traits, and positive social institutions.
Other levels of agency and knowing emerge in
the course of human
development. The higher knowing levels are
characterized by self-reflexive
awareness, which permits the person to
consciously deliberate and form explicit
theories of the good person and the good
life. These more consciously formed
positive folk psychologies are always in a
dialectical relationship with the more
implicit and embodied understandings of the
good life that are manifested in
social practices, emotional experiences, and
habitual thoughts.
We suggest that this framework helps to
account for the ‘diversity of
goods’ (Taylor, 1985) that underlies our
lives and also helps to clarify the relationship
that the professional positive psychologist
will have with his or her
native folk psychology. We begin by
discussing two aspects of interactivism—
implicitness and the knowing levels—that we
contend will provide a
more specific and more integrated ontology
for positive psychology.
Knowing Level 1: Being-in-the-World and
Engaged Agency
From the interactive standpoint, our most
basic way of knowing, at Knowing
Level 1, comes through interaction in the
world. Knowledge begins procedurally:
infants and children learn how to do or
accomplish various things.
Initially their ways of getting these things
done are relatively simple. For
instance, babies learn that kicking the crib
makes the mobile shake or that
crying elicits a certain kind of response
from a caregiver. Through variation
CHRISTOPHER
& CAMPBELL: INTERACTIVIST-HERMENEUTIC METATHEORY 677
and selection, human beings learn functional
patterns of interacting with the
physical and social world.
Babies and young children lack the
self-knowing ‘I’ or ego that Descartes
(1641/1960) treated as fundamental and that
many philosophers and psychologists
are still following him in doing. Until age 4
or so, human beings know
and learn without ever knowing that they
know. What they know pertains to
the external environment: which types of
interactions are possible, which
consequences those interactions will have.
Internal experiences are part of
knowing and learning about the environment,
but not until later in development
will children know anything about
their experiences.
According to the hermeneutic philosopher
Martin Heidegger (1927/1962),
we are, at the most basic level, beings
engaged in the world doing something,
or being-in-the-world. He maintains that we
are born into, and take over in a
preconscious way, social traditions and
practices along with the meanings
that are implicit in them. Infants, for
instance, learn to participate in varieties
of social interactions such as peek-a-boo.
Older children learn how to navigate
through the social interactions involved in
ordering and eating food at a
McDonald’s restaurant. Importantly, children
have learned numerous patterns
of interaction, physical and social, well
before establishing any sense
of themselves as a separate, conscious ego.
Children exhibit a type of
engaged and embodied agency not centered in
any explicit sense of self.
When we are fully engaged in life activities,
our subjectivity or selfawareness
is often noticeably absent. We make judgments
about other people
(Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Gladwell, 2005;
Wilson, 2002) and render
many of our decisions (Klein, 1998) without
consciously knowing how we
do them. Musicians, dancers, artists, and
athletes have all made reference to
being caught up in the flow of activity and
having no room for self-conscious
awareness (Csikszentmihályi, 1990). Indeed,
it is often self-consciousness
that inhibits people or pulls them out of the
smooth flow of interaction. In
the words of the behind-the-plate philosopher
Yogi Berra (n.d.), ‘How can
you hit and think at the same time?’
Heidegger claims that being-in-theworld
precedes our coming to distinguish a subject
and an object, a self and
an other, a mind and a body, facts and
values. It is our most basic way of
functioning in life.
Heidegger further sought to transcend the
diremption between fact and
value by pointing out how concern, care, and
signification structure human
lives. What we attend to and how we allocate
our time and energy all indicate
what we care about and value. Our behavior,
emotions, and thought make presuppositions
about what is real, important, and valuable.
As Bickhard (1992a,
2004) puts it, a valuing process is inherent
in all human functioning. Taylor
(1989) contends that ‘[s]elfhood and the
good, or in another way selfhood and
morality, turn out to be inextricably
intertwined themes’ (p. 3).
One indication that human agency is basically
being-in-the-world comes
from research on the early development of
memory. The kind of memory that
678 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 18(5)
could capture explicit perception of objects
and of the self has been referred to
as episodic or event-based memory. For the
episodes to be part of our own life
story, like our recollection of the birthday
party we had when we were 5 years
old, something further is required:
autobiographical memory. Autobiographical
memory is what enables us to retain the type
of self-conscious occurrences that
Descartes insisted were fundamental. But
memory researchers see autobiographical
memory as a developmental achievement, not a
starting place. The
most rudimentary form is procedural or enactive
memory—remembering how
to do things in concrete situations, without
self-consciousness (Nelson, 1992,
1994; Tulving, 1985, 1987; Tulving &
Schachter, 1990). When a baby remembers
how to make the mobile above her crib move
(by kicking it), she is using
procedural memory. The developmental primacy
of remembering how to
accomplish certain things is consistent with
Heidegger’s view that human
agency is ‘primordially’ the type of embodied
and engaged agency he describes
as being-in-the-world.
We could multiply examples from the earliest
stages of human development,
but need not do so to make our point. And it
is not as though we ever outgrow
Knowing Level 1; a good deal of mature adult
functioning is still being-in-theworld,
dependent on quick recognition of situations
where action is necessary,
or rapid judgments about other human beings
whose basis normally remains
unknown to us (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999;
Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Bargh &
Williams, 2006; Gladwell, 2005; Klein, 1998;
Wilson, 2002).
Implicitness
Most schools of thought in psychology assume
that for something outside us
to have a lasting influence, we must
internalize it. Somehow it needs to be
brought into each person’s mind and made
present there (Bickhard, 1992a;
Bickhard & Christopher, 1994). For
instance, attachment theorists have discussed
‘internal working models’ of self and other
that are based on the
child’s experience with primary caretakers
(Bowlby, 1988; Bretherton, 1993;
Bretherton & Munholland, 1999). But the
goals that the baby sets, the ways
of acting that the baby is learning, and the
baby’s emotional responses do not
require an explicit conception either of what
the baby is like, or of what the
caregiver is like; the baby can develop
preferences and expectations that presuppose
that the caregiver is reliable without
constructing any internal model
whatsoever concerning the caregiver’s
character or likely future behavior.
Even in adulthood, it is unwise to assume
that unconscious biases in judgment
or decision-making are always the result of
past conscious value choices,
when they are readily acquired and even
modified without the involvement of
conscious processes (Gladwell, 2005; Wilson,
2002).
Interactivism takes implicitness to be a
crucial feature both of being-in-theworld
and of social practices. Implicitness
explains how certain things can be
CHRISTOPHER
& CAMPBELL: INTERACTIVIST-HERMENEUTIC METATHEORY 679
functionally true of
an entity in interaction with its environment without having
to be anywhere within
the entity (Bickhard, 1993, 1999). In particular,
implicitness provides a way to model and
understand how family and culture,
including familial and cultural norms, can
influence early development without
having to assume that infants and toddlers
have yet acquired the means to
cognize those influences. Even in adulthood,
when we can think consciously
about cultural norms and sometimes do, much
of their influence on us
remains implicit.
For instance, the patterns of interaction
that the infant develops within the
family constellation and his or her position
in that constellation embody any
number of implicit presuppositions. Imagine
an American infant in the 1950s
raised in an emotionally distant and
unresponsive family that adhered to clockbased
caretaking routines (such as a strict
timetable for feeding) and a belief that
‘crying it out’ alone promotes emotional
maturity. Initially the infant will cry for
food, attention, emotional responsiveness,
and other basic needs. However, soon
he will discover that such cries go unheeded.
Furthermore, crying only aggravates
his discomfort by adding physiological and
emotional stress. The infant
may learn that quietude offers the best
solution in such an environment, for while
his cries continue to go unheeded, he avoids
the unpleasant effects of physiological
arousal (sore throat, exhaustion, burning
eyes, etc.).
Quietude as a response to distress directly
presupposes that no one would
respond if he were to cry—precisely what he
has in fact experienced. But the
presupposition is entirely implicit. There is
no explicit representation or belief
about his mother or father’s response, and as
a young infant, he does not have
the cognitive capacity for any such explicit
representations.
What’s more, functional patterns of
interaction and ways of being will have
layers of
presuppositions. Lack of responsiveness to the infant per
se presupposes
that no one cares about the infant’s
emotional needs. The infant’s quietude
presupposes that others value
time and schedules more than they value
the child’s emotional life. A lack of caring
or a lower priority can in turn presuppose
that the infant is not worthy
of being cared for or given priority. A lack
of worthiness can presuppose that the infant
is not lovable or has some
defect
that makes him aversive to others. The kinds
of presuppositions discussed in
this example are not simply presuppositions
true of the child. They are
presuppositions
concerning the child
in his environment. They pertain to patterns of
interaction that undercut and transcend simple
dichotomies of self and object.
The infant and young child are cognitively
incapable of differentiating the
properties of the current environment from
other possible environments; the
ability to recognize alternative
possibilities is a developmental achievement
(Piaget, 1981/1987a, 1983/1987b). Nor are
they capable of differentiating
who contributes what to any given
interaction. Nor can they differentiate a
sense of self from the totality of their
being.
One specific pattern of interaction thus
entails cascading presuppositions
about the nature of the self, of others, of
the world, of life. Meanwhile, the
680 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 18(5)
interactivist notion of implicitness guards
against prematurely attributing
such presuppositions to explicit cognitive elements
(internal representations,
beliefs, schemata, etc.) in the child’s mind.
As a consequence, interactive patterns are
not something that the child as a
distinct entity has or engages in. They are
not just the child’s differentiated
adjustment to this
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